


a startling clarity

by PikaCheeka



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Drugs, M/M, Yakuza, mild exhibitionism, so close yet so far come on guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:15:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaCheeka/pseuds/PikaCheeka
Summary: Trip sometimes wonders if he's the only member of the Midorijima yakuza who hasn't fucked Virus yet, and he isn't sure he understands why this is.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just another one of those "ViTri aren't banging and are dancing on the edge" fics I've been very into lately, which you will see as you read. I have too many ViTri fics started and have been slow to finish any; this was originally part of a grander scheme but it works very well as a stand-alone!

 "Hey do you ever fuck that whore of a room-mate of yours? You live with him, don't you?"

Trip tilts his head to the left and shrugs. The words hang heavily around him, settling in the air and seeping into his skin, preventing him from seeing the suits in his hand. Yes, he lives with him. Yes, he is a whore. Slut might be more apt, seeing as he spread his legs for more than cash or even information. But no, he's never fucked him. It isn't as if he hasn't considered it, the words shaking the memories up in a slow and ponderous manner. He's only watched at times, on video and in person. He is aware enough to know that others might find this strange, but it's only natural considering their jobs and general closeness, their complete lack of concern over privacy when it came to one another. Modesty bred out of them after years as lab rats. It isn't the first time he's been asked this. He supposes it would make sense for them to have given it a try at some point, but they haven't, somehow, as if whatever they felt when they caught one another's eyes at three in the morning was the one aspect of life for them that was off-limits.

"Really? He's hot though, and I hear he'll do anything." A meaningful glance at the door behind Trip, into the next room where both Virus and one of the higher-ups have been occupied in negotiations for some time.

Trip snorts, one side of his mouth turning up as he stamps a cigarette out. He needs something heavier. "Not quite." He knows Virus has his limits, knows he refuses to entirely strip, knows that not even the wealthiest clients have seen Virus vulnerable, without his glasses or socks or a shirt. He knows Virus makes people wear condoms, regardless of all of their vaccines. He knows the one or two sex acts, the particular drugs, that make Virus' eyes dilate and his skin turn cold. He knows Virus so intimately it's a wonder they haven't done it.

"But he does all that bondage shit. And costumes and drugs and torture. He's fucking crazy, I hear."

"Yea," Trip shuffles the cards and glances at his watch for the seventh time that night. It's been a long stakeout and he's wondering how his partner is. "That's Virus."

A strange person to dedicate his life to, from that moment when their eyes had first met. He'd known then, and he never doubted it, not as the years passed and he quietly watched Virus become the man he is now. _Fucking crazy._ Quietly watched and quietly wanted. Because Virus was beautiful, pure, untouchable, so vibrantly unaware as he snorted uppers and clung to Trip and purred that they should fuck sometime, eyes snapping and singing with a drug-infused madness and a blissful oblivion. He knows and he doesn't. The years of torture he'd been subjected to, later subjected others to in such a way that indicated his own childhood had only allowed him to be more creative than he might otherwise have been, had peeled away whatever slight ability he might have had to comprehend the situation. That much the younger man knew, even if he himself didn't quite understand what was between them.

No. They've never fucked. Never even kissed. Just a few bored, intoxicated handjobs, usually initiated by a giggling Virus who regularly asked why Trip stayed with him when he was on enough drugs. _Because you're that soft, pure, white light. Because your voice is grounding, orienting. Because you stumble into my bed at night and press against me and sigh in contentment just as you've done for seventeen years. Because you know exactly what to do and say to calm me down. Because you’re safe and honest._ But he never says any of it. The first time he'd killed someone, Virus had approached him from behind and gently laid those tapered white fingers over his eyes and murmured in his ear until the fight went out of him and all he could think of was Virus, Virus, _Virus_. The murder had been arousing enough as it was. He knew he had the job because of him, because he whored himself out to the higher-ups until they allowed a white teenager into the Yakuza ranks; the fact that he'd proved himself a dozen times over in the last decade can't change what Virus did to get him where he is now. But Virus would never say it, never hold it over him. He probably didn't even realize why he had done it beyond convenience.

"How long have you known him?"

The words are slow to crack through the haze of Virus in his mind. "Seventeen years."

The man stares at him across the card table. "Since you were kids."

"Something like that." Trip is fairly certain they were never kids, not in any conventional sense of the word.

"Was he always a slut?"

Trip doesn't respond immediately, only flips the cards, throws a chip on the table and watches it clatter to a halt. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that isn't the right word for what happened back then, but it's what Virus called himself and he takes his word for it. He doesn't know when the doctors started selling him, before or after they met. He'd been too young to understand then, the words the other kids called Virus. It doesn't really matter, he supposes, because that glittering cruelty beneath his skin was always there, a pure viciousness, a starved pit viper willing to use his body and his looks to get whatever he wanted. _Drugs. A private room. Better surgeons. A delay in being the guinea pig for a new drug that had killed other patients._ He remembers Virus laughing at the corpse in the dorm bed, the first dead body Trip had ever seen, remembers the breath hot in his ear when the older boy had suddenly turned, suggested they cut him open before anyone else noticed he was dead, that he had a scalpel in his room. Trip remembers with startling clarity the bruises on his wrists and throat. "Yea."

"Aw, even as a kid and you really never had a go? Doesn't seem fair. You're best mates." He pauses. "Even if he is a dude...he's not bad looking."

"I know." He doesn't add that he's always known, that his first wet dream was of Virus, that nearly all of them since have been, regardless of whom he is in bed with at the time. He only dates women. Older, not much though, just five to ten years. Of a certain type is preferred, _mixed race, visually impaired_. They aren't easy to find so he settles. They are all stand-in anyway; he doesn't fool himself that far. He's fucked a few men before, but it's only Virus that he thinks of when he touches himself, and therefore he prefers the distance women offer.

"Do you think about it?"

"Kinda question is that? Fold." He throws the cards onto the table and leans back, flexes his arms just enough to make the fabric tighten over his biceps. He knows if Virus were there, his eyes would be on him as he lights a cigar now, all the while wishing he had something still stronger. It's going to be some time before this is over.

"Well you must see him...I mean, with the way he is, you must see a lot."

Trip snorts at this. Seen a lot. Heard and felt and smelled and tasted a lot. There'd been plenty of times when he'd helped Virus clean up after a bad night, held him still as he puked over the toilet and wiped the blood and come from his legs and ass. He remembers the way Virus looks at him when his hands linger over that needle-pricked pale skin on his inner thighs, at once curious and triumphant. Stupidity and sadism interrupting a desire they don't know how to act on. Virus had spoken of it only once, had abruptly pushed Trip back one night and climbed into his lap, met his eyes for a long, agonizing moment before laughing, pressing his forehead to his shoulder. _I want to end the night with good sex someday. Good sex? With someone I don't hate._ And he'd pulled back, sighed and stood and moved off to the shower. And Trip remembers with a startling clarity the bruises on his hips. "I've seen a lot."

"If he's that trashy, you could just fuck him anytime, no?"

"I know." He closes his eyes a moment. He does know this. It'd be easy to take Virus. Someone who, even at thirty-one, stumbles home at odd hours, popping drugs and getting plastered the way he did at twenty, barely in control of anything he does most nights by the time he is alone with Trip, though he holds himself together remarkably well with others. A whore and a sex maniac with a long history of being assaulted and shrugging it off. And someone who regularly presses up against Trip in the middle of the night, who touches him and whispers in his ear only when drunk, who trusts him entirely. Virus is there for him to take whenever he pleases, and yet... "It's not like that though. He's the same as me."

"Just do it. You always have eye sex with him anyway."

Trip jerks upright, the first abrupt movement he's made all evening, and the man across the table skitters back a few paces when Trip leans forward to pick up the cards again. He doesn't notice, only hears "sex with him" and wonders what he missed. "What?"

"The way you look at each other. Everyone knows you two want to get it on."

"Oh."

"Oh. That's-" but before he can continue, the door behind Trip opens, and Virus walks into the room. It isn't difficult to understand what he'd been doing behind closed doors while Trip wiled the hours away. Negotiations.

"Hellooo," the word is drawn-out, and Trip knows from the first syllable that he is drunk.

He twitches, lips curled around his cigar as his eyes dart over towards Virus for the barest of seconds. The man across from him tenses, unsure if the game is going to continue, unsure if he wants to be alone with these two. But Trip isn't speaking to Virus, isn't throwing the cards down and standing to go to him.

If the older man finds Trip's lack of response unusual, if it even _is_ unusual, he doesn't seem to care as he slips across the room and seats himself on the arm of his chair. Trip moves quickly, so fluidly and naturally it's as if Virus were merely an extension of his own body, and wraps an arm around his waist. It's at once intimate and distancing, giving Virus something to lean on and holding him in place as he drunkenly balances on the chair's arm.

His shirt is untucked and he smells of sweat and sex and what may or may not be vodka. Trip can taste his light in the air around him as he leans over. "What are you gonna do with that king, huh? And the ace? What about-"

Trip is fairly certain Virus doesn't even know what they are playing, though he wants to tell him to shut up, that he's ruining the game, but the cigar is in the way and Virus pleasantly asks him to repeat himself when he mumbles around it. He sighs and makes a grab for it, catching it between his thumb and forefinger before fully registering that his arm was still around Virus, now having slid from the chair’s arm and pressing against the side of his head. Back arched and ass out, as if to avoid getting in Trip's way. But the younger man knows better, knows the position is meant to be just as provocative as it is elusive; he catches a glimpse of Virus' face from the corner of his eye. _That look_ , curious and triumphant, smug, at once satisfied and desperate. And then it's gone. He's composed again, lazy and bored as he gently prizes the cigar from Trip's fingers, raises it to his lips, and inhales deeply, ribcage sliding against the younger man’s cheek.

He considers saying something, with the way Virus' lips curl around his cigar. _What was that mouth doing five minutes ago?_ But he doesn't ask. He only traces circles on Virus' midriff with his index finger, his untucked shirt having ridden up when Trip moved abruptly. His skin is sticky, soft. _Recently fucked_. He doesn't ask because he knows the answer and it doesn't matter, not when Virus is present and pressed against him because he wants to be, because the first thing he does after spreading his legs for filthy-minded men twice his age is go to Trip's side and initiate contact while still in a post-coital haze. An arm around his shoulders and now, a hand on his head, a touch that would result in broken bones for anyone but Virus. He hesitates for only a moment before leaning into the fingers slowly massaging his scalp, whiteness seeping through his skin and softening the harsh light of the room. He can feel Virus breathing against him, the rise and fall of his chest against his face. He notes with a startling clarity that his nipples are erect and wonders if it means anything, if there are bruises beneath the expensive fabric or if he himself is the reason for this, but before he can wrap his mind around a comment, the cigar is back in his mouth and those tapered fingers are resting on his face.

And then the man across the table throws his cards facedown and clears his throat. The glance he gives Trip is clear.

Trip doesn't have to look to feel Virus' smile through the hand pressed to his jaw as he purrs. "You have a game to finish, hm?"

"Go clean up," is all he says in response.

Fingers brush against his lower lip as Virus' grin widens. His face is dangerously close to Trip’s ear as he leans in. "Mm, you're cute when you're bossy." And then he's gone, twisting away from his arm just as fluidly as Trip had moved to first hold him and leaving behind the same door he entered from. The scent of his cologne and the radiance of his voice linger on Trip's skin, a whiteness he feels curling inside of him as he clenches his teeth around the cigar that had been in Virus' mouth only moments ago.

"If you want to follow him, I won't look at your cards. Go get him in the shower."

There is no response.

The man groans and leans back. "He's crazy for you."

Trip only shrugs, but one corner of his mouth turns up as he does. The man across the table almost misses the response, spoken so softly he wonders if he imagined it. “ _I know_.”

 


End file.
